BUDDY MARTIN BLOG Remembering The Great American Sportswriter: About To Become An Endangered Species
In addition, sports writers are a magnificent repository of remarkably unblemished narratives, colorful rhetoric, beautiful irony and cynicism, fascinating hyperbole, truthful insight and falling-down funny anecdotes. Most of that, however, is bound to be washed out to sea with the next wave.
Every year about this time I am rejuvenated by the harbinger of college football, SEC Media Days, and with it I become a little nostalgic. What started out as an informal gathering of coaches and a few newspaper stragglers developed into a massive, glorious gabfest about the most powerful sports conglomerate in the South, if not the nation. Greenlight permission, if you will, to talk Down South ball.
They can browbeat us with NIL issues, keep us guessing on access restricted by Covid and confuse us with the Transfer Portal news. But in some form, there will be football in a few months. And, thankfully, that feels a little bit normal even with all the obfuscation.
It brings me to the realization that another football season means further evolution as the next chapter in The Disappearance of The Great American Sportswriter. That saddens me. But before you label me as another “Get Off My Lawn” geezer, let me explain.
I didn’t say “death,” I said “disappearance.” While there is a certain finality about the demise of the golden age of journalism, the expiration of newspapers and shrinking print media, there will always be evolution of new talent and new technology to restock the shelves somewhat. So that leaves room for a comeback.
However, just like nobody will ever make music again like Mozart or Elvis or the Beatles or Tom Petty, we seem to lose a little bit of our soul with a gradual extinction of this marvelous breed of storytellers born out of the press box.
Perhaps we can only hope they are in sleep mode, or will return in another 17 years with the Cicadas, or are just lost in space. But for nearly a century The Great American Sportswriters have helped us sort out the defugalties of life by reiterating the joy and drama and pathos directly from the field to our living rooms without the assault of electronics on our brains and psyche. And that has been a good thing.
In addition, sportswriters are a magnificent repository of remarkably unblemished narratives, colorful rhetoric, beautiful irony and cynicism, fascinating hyperbole, truthful insight and falling-down funny anecdotes. Most of that, however, is bound to be washed out to sea with the next wave.
You can accuse me of romanticizing a dead-end profession or pining for a lost cause or merely lamenting the absence of the paper or a good book, but really it is none of that. It’s much more selfish. As one of them myself I am, in fact, somewhat mourning the extinction of an endangered species, like we once did the buffalo or eagle. In my opinion, an iconic American treasure.
This is not the first declaration of such a sports media erosion. Kevin Koczwara of The Stacks Reader, who I don’t know, wrote this in February, 2020, after Houghton Mifflin Harcourt announced it would cease publication of “The Best American Sports Writing Series” (which I never accepted as gospel anyway):
“Deadspin is gone. Grantland is gone. SBNation longform is gone … Newspapers have cut their entire staffs as venture capitalists look to wring every penny out of them. Sports Illustrated has become a shell game. Money has dried up to do the kind of reporting needed to tell a truly great story … No longer does the industry have the time or patience to truly nurture such a thing, because, make no doubt, the kinds of stories that touch a reader and stay with them forever are the ones that take months, sometimes years, to craft.”
And he’s not wrong.
A dozen years ago I toyed with the idea of doing a book called “Will The Last Great Sportswriter Leaving The Press Box Please Turn Out The Lights?” Nobody wanted to publish it and a New York editor working on one of my seven books advised me, “Don’t make that your next book or the one after that – but maybe the one after that.” I’ve done two books since then and I’m still waiting.
Finally a couple of years later, a friend, former classmate and fellow sports editor asked if he could have permission to pitch that book idea as his own, to which I said, “of course!” A couple of more years later he ditched the idea.
Are we getting the signal that nobody cares? Maybe. But as a self-anointed patron saint for lost causes, I hereby invoke this Tom Petty-ism: “Don’t Back Down.” There’s no plan for a book now, but there may be another way to tell the story: A podcast called “The Great American Sportswriter” with living, breathing sports subjects …. sometimes talking about other greats who are no longer with us.
Last week I sent about a dozen texts to good friends in the business as a query about my idea. I got strong responses of mostly “yes,” plus offers to help. Not the kind of self-serving, narcissistic comments that some might think, but instead genuine responses like:
“Perfect. How can I help?”
“Great idea pal.”
“Cool idea.”
This isn’t one of those campaigns to bring back Walter Cronkite to the 6:30 news, because not even Uncle Walt could make sense out of today’s morass of information. So what is it? I guess a celebration of the craft that I’ve served for most of my 60 years as a journalist. And rather than complain about the darkness, I’ve devised this candle-lighting plan in the name of preservation. So let the first match be struck.
Of course there is a matter of my limited bandwidth, considering than I currently own and operate GatorBait Magazine, host The Buddy Martin Show, co-host The Best Fridays in Football with Urban Meyer and am writing and/or developing three books. (Which makes me ask myself, how come more people don’t subscribe, support and advertise in one of these entities during this cash-rich era of NIL? is it wrong to try and make a profit instead unintentionally being a non-profit?)
Ken Burns made me do this! The other night I was watching a rerun of a segment about the documentarian Burns on Sixty Minutes, who at 67 has spectacularly delivered some of the best Americana stories in our country’s history. Asked about how he found the time, he said to Scott Pelley that he works on “six or seven films at a time” so he “always have one a year coming out.”
So I figured, what the heck, what’s one more podcast occasionally?
I hope to tap into the energy needed to unearth some sort of worthy insight about these typewriter/computer jockeys who made so many of my Saturdays feel like I was walking into hallowed walls of the press box that was once partly Cooperstown and
partly Sistine Chapel.
I’m not sure who all would be included for the podcast or what subjects, but the majority would be living and some may be inclusive of the departed. For instance, my list of hopefuls would certainly include Sally Jenkins of the Washington Post and naturally we would also talk about her late father Dan Jenkins, who is among the giants. Among the living, should they be willing: Tony Kornheiser, Gary Smith and Rick Reilly. Then there is my all-time favorite, the late Edwin Pope, and his departed colleagues Jim Murray, Blackie Sherrod and Furman Bisher. Any list without Red Smith would be bogus, but since he is no longer with us, I’d also reference him through the likes of my current friends Dave Kindred and Neil Amdur. I would also include Kindred’s former bosses George Solomon and Frank Deford, the latter of which has passed away. You gotta find some reference to our Legendary Son of the South, the late Grantland Rice.
This is by no means a completed list – it is hardly started. There is no set of parameters or guidelines and it’s not intended to represent a Hall of Fame, but more of a sampling of interesting stories by and about the people with whom I am familiar or acquainted. So anecdotes and stories will trump celebrity.
Who else to include on our list of interviewees? Send me your thoughts, ideas, responses to Buddymartinshow@gmail.com.
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